A Mechanical instrument incorporating at least one violin that is bowed and fingered automatically. Normally this is placed in the case of an upright Expression piano or Reproducing piano, and the playing mechanism of both piano and violin is operated by a musical programme in the form of a pneumatic paper-roll system.
The principle of the ‘endless bow’, often in the form of a rosined wheel, is an ancient one, and characteristic of such instruments as the hurdy-gurdy. Designs for keyboard instruments applying this principle go back to Leonardo da Vinci (see Sostenente piano, §1). Makers of fairground organs and orchestrions such as Gavioli, Mortier and J.D. Philipps sought to imitate a string tone using specially voiced, narrow-scaled organ pipes. During the 18th and 19th centuries, however, various attempts were made to construct an automatic violin player. The first practical and reliable instruments were made by Hupfeld in Leipzig, beginning around 1900. After two unsuccessful prototypes, they produced the Phonoliszt Violina in 1907 (put on the market in 1908). This spectacular instrument uses as a base a Hupfeld Phonoliszt expression piano – later a reproducing piano was used – having three violins each with one string played by a pneumatic fingering system. The violins are set vertically, with the necks lowermost, in a cupola set into the case of the piano (see illustration). A circular rotating bow, strung with horsehair, encompasses the violins and is driven at variable speeds between 7 and 32 r.p.m. by a pneumatic motor. When a note is to be sounded, the violin with the appropriate string is pushed outwards so that the string makes contact with the rotating bow. At the same time a small pneumatic motor presses a mechanical ‘finger’ down onto the string to stop it at the required pitch. A wide range of expressive possibilities is available through varying the speed of the bowing wheel or its pressure on the string, the provision of a bridge mute and a vibrato effect caused by an eccentric rotating wheel attached to the tailpiece of the violin. Duet or trio passages can be played by the violins sounding together, and the violins are accompanied by the reproducing piano; the effect is extremely convincing.
Another model was designed for use in public places such as restaurants and bars, having two music rolls that could be played interchangeably, and therefore non-stop, when accompanying silent films. A later version had six violins.
A Swedish engineer, Henry K. Sandell, employed by the Mills Novelty Company in Chicago, took the Swedish nyckelharpa, or keyed fiddle, as his model, and in 1905 produced the Automatic Virtuoso – an electrically operated violin with a perforated paper roll. The instrument created a sensation on a tour of Britain in 1908. On 13 March the Birmingham Gazette reported: ‘Everything that a fine violinist could do, the machine did, and did perfectly. It executed trills and shakes, picked the strings, or played sliding notes just as the composition demanded, and throughout there was no sound or sign of mechanical origin save only the slight buzzing of the motor’. The company then placed this device in a cabinet with a symmetrically-strung 44-note piano, and called it the Violano-Virtuoso. In this coin-operated machine the violin is placed horizontally; for each of the four strings there is a separate small celluloid disc ‘bow’ and pitch is controlled by four rows of electro-magnetic ‘fingers’. The electro-magnetic action also included variable-speed bowing and variable vibrato.
The firm tried to capitalize on the popularity of the Violano-Virtuoso with the Viol-Cello (which had an additional side-cabinet containing a cello, forming a piano trio), the Viol-Xylophone (which replaced the piano with a metal-bar xylophone), the String Quartette (with three violins and a cello) and the Melody Violin (a two-manual keyboard from which ‘any number of violins from one to a hundred’ could be played with an electric mechanism), but none of these achieved the same success.
Other makers of automatic violin players included Hegeler & Ehrlers of Oldenburg (the Geigenpiano, 1906–8), E. Dienst of Leipzig (Sebstspielende Geige, 1910–12), Popper of Leipzig (Violinovo, 1930–31) and J.D. Philipps & Söhne of Frankfurt. The latter experimented with a violin in one of its Paganini orchestrions (c1910–14) but opted in the end for violin-toned organ pipes in its Paganini Violin Piano (piano-orchestrion). None of these had the success of the Hupfeld instrument.
L. Hupfeld: Dea-Violina (Leipzig, 1909)
H.N. Roehl: Player Piano Treasury (Vestal, NY, 1961, 2/1973)
Q.D. Bowers: Put Another Nickel in: a History of Coin-Operated Pianos and Orchestrions (Vestal, NY, 1966)
Q.D. Bowers: Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments (Vestal, NY, 1972)
A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: ‘The Violano-Virtuoso and its Swedish Origins’, Music & Automata, i (1983–4), 134–42
J. Brauers: Von der Äolsharfe zum Digitalspieler: 2000 Jahre mechanische Musik, 100 Jahre Schallplatte (Munich, 1984)
M. Kitner and A. Reblitz: The Mills Violano-Virtuoso: the Famous Self-Playing Violin and Piano (Vestal, NY, 1984)
H. Jüttemann: Mechanische Musikinstrumente: Einführung in Technik und Geschichte (Frankfurt, 1987)
ARTHUR W.J.G. ORD-HUME